Short Radiant Dawn theories post

[professor_tammi]

I don't have too many of these theories floating around in my head because I'm not the most creative person (I'm really not), but for what it's worth, I'll post the ones I do have here. And also because I've wanted to write something about them for a while. They're mostly plot-related and probably not very interesting and I can't actually do anything with them since I can't write, but um.

1. The Blood Pact can target specific people. If the person invoking the pact doesn't specify who they want killed, they will be picked at random from the target country. The only "evidence" (if you could even call it that) of this in the game is that, for both Kilvas' and Daein's (to be specific, the one Ashnard made) Blood Pacts, the people who were eventually killed were very close to the kings of their respective countries - which I feel matters for obvious reasons, since losing their loved ones would make them more likely to succumb to the will of the contract holder. A theory that might make more sense is that the pact slightly favors royalty over others; the only problem I see with this is that it obviously doesn't guarantee that Ashnard's plan to wipe out his family would succeed, and I like to think that he wouldn't leave that completely up to chance. Idek, I probably just really like the idea of a Death Note-ish kind of thing because it makes way for more mindgames, which are of course always a good thing. So basically, it can be used to kill specific persons, while at the same time killing off people picked at random - making it seem as if they all died from a mysterious plague.
2. Yune has the power to manipulate others' sub-conscious minds. My primary reason for believing this is that she is able to control the dreams of several characters and send messages by way of them. In addition to that, everyone is willing to follow her from the moment they meet her because they "feel it's the right thing to do" - which I also believe has to do with Yune manipulating their minds, somehow. Ashera's blessing prevents her from doing this to the Disciples of Order, however, and this power takes its toll on Yune, so she doesn't abuse it. (Yay, random headcanon~ also please excuse my psychology nerding)
3. Soren is around 22, not ~15, years old in RD. There are only two theories that I've seen regarding Soren's age, and they may seem to contradict each other at first, so I'll try explaining which one I think makes the most sense. The "Soren is 15" thing comes from a comment Almedha makes, iirc, where she mentions it's been more than 15 years since she last saw Ashnard. Note that she doesn't specify exactly how much more than 15 years it's been, though - since she's a dragon, it seems fair to assume that she has a somewhat different perception of time than humans do (which also pretty much means that there's not much of a contradiction at all here). In PoR, Ena mentions that Rajaion "left 19 years ago" - which would make Soren 19 in FE9. This makes sense, since Soren is bothered by people treating him like a child (because in spite of his looks, he's an adult). I also have this headcanon of Soren being born late in the year and Ike being born relatively early, which means Ike is anywhere from 1 - 2 years younger than Soren unless I'm math!failing again. But uh that's kind of unrelated. Sort of.
4. Spirit Charmers are the only people who can use dark magic. Because Pelleas is the only playable spirit charmer, and also the only playable character who uses dark magic, Lehran excepted. Speaking of Lehran, though... he's either a) an exception, as mentioned (it's possible it was some sort of power granted to him by Ashera, who is also able to use dark magic), b) actually a spirit charmer, which is kind of an interesting idea. Though I don't know how much sense it actually makes.
5. Soren's brand is remarkably similar to Pelleas mark. Actually, this is canon - in their boss conversation, Pelleas recognizes Soren by his brand and comments on the similarity. There's a reason it's important, though. When Almedha first asked Izuka to look for her son, she probably gave him a description of his brand as she remembered it - which is why Pelleas was chosen, and not someone else. This is also how Pelleas recognizes Soren as Almedha's real son, and why it's necessary for the boss conversation to take place in order to unlock the extra epilogue scene. (U-um, this is really obvious to me, but for some reason I've never seen anybody mention it, so I figured I might as well write something about it.)

(Mentioning birth dates makes me wonder about when the characters were actually born. Uh. And now I'm wondering if I should make an FE zodiac. It seems like an incredibly nerdy thing to do, which is obviously a good thing~)

Random theories aside, though, is there such a thing as being addicted to drawing fan art
because I stayed up to 4 am to draw last night, which is kind of creepy, and I still draw really really slowly (seriously. I envy artists who can draw amazing things in a few hours. Just, how do they do it)

Also, this is completely unrelated to the rest of this post, but this is kind of a fun blog writing analysis site. My results. Apparently it thinks I'm upset most of the time, though. I thought I was mostly happy ;_; (crying smileys and whining aside)
I'm also confused as to why it thinks I'm 18 - 25. what. I thought I was one of the most childish people on the internet

Comments

[kiu22.livejournal.com]

I did wrote a very long comment and lj ate it. oh, the hate.

uh, hi? hope you don't mind my random comments, I wanted to spam your lj for a while but never found the time, sigh. I'll do it sometime or another, if you don't mind of course ♥
Anyway, these are really interesting theories!
I've never thought about Yune having that sort of power, but it makes a lot of sense, even more considering she's a sort of personification of human emotions. And it's surely a better explanation than the "we trust her because the story must go on!".
I've always considered Soren to be 21-22 years old at RD time, and it seems the most plausible theory for the reasons you listen above...after all, Almedha said "more than 15 years" but didn't specify how much more. (it was just my imagination or Pelleas did a comment about his age at one point? I may remember wrong, or the italian version may have done some changes to dialogues like cutting of the "father of Sothe's children" line *forever crying* ;_;). Soren may also have lied about his age to hide his slow growth at some point? this is like, an headcanon in the headcanon, but could make sense somehow XD
As for dark magic, I've always thought it to be the hardest magic to control and so to be geniuses-exclusively or something but I like your idea. In any case, being a spirit charmer is the only way Pelleas was able to use it in my opinion, and I still wonder how he got the learnt it considering his past poor boy has to be good at something at least XD

On another note... yay, drawings! I feel you on the envy for speed artists, especially when their "speedpaints" have 258393485 details or like, perfect anatomy :|

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

Argh, LJ eating comments. I'm sorry that happened - it's really frustrating. :|

Ah, and I don't mind commentspam at all! I'm really happy you commented. Thank you~ (... and I'm surprised you find them interesting, but I'm glad anyway. :D)

I think it might make sense for Yune to be able to control emotions in general to a certain extent, too. But I felt it there had to be some kind of real reason everybody immediately trusted her - it didn't really seem randomly thrown into the game as a way to force the plot to go on.

As for Pelleas' age... hm. I can't remember, either. I didn't even know there was an Italian language option! My game doesn't seem to have it, at least, and it's a PAL version. (B-but did they really cut that line? why would they do that it's the best line in the entire game ;_;)

I can possibly see Soren lying about his age, though, but that would only be necessary once he gets older. He didn't show signs of aging slower than normal beorc until he was 16 years old (assuming he was indeed 19 in PoR), after all. But on the other hand, he doesn't really seem to care as much about disclosing information of his heritage in RD, so there's also that. (... and now I feel bad for Pelleas. His ability to use dark magic isn't even a talent going by my headcanon. ;o;)

Oh dear, speedpaints. I keep seeing artists who speedpaint the most amazing things in 30 minutes while I spend more than 12 hours on painfully mediocre/bad fan art
I just... I wish I knew how they did it.

[kiu22.livejournal.com]

Yay! <3

Sorry, I did not express myself well, I didn't intent Yune to control emotions, I agree with the theory the way you intend it
but I'm not good at explaining or at english, for that matter XD

Uhhm...I don't know, the italian version of PoR has only one language but RD is a PAL version with 5 languages in it, and yet it doesn't make me change the language in any way. maybe it sets automatically depending on the Wii language? O_o'
yes ;__; they mitigated some sentences, even more than in the english version, and also changed all the names of existing places (for example, Crimea became Ozna and Gallia became Gania)...I'm not sure of the reason though I can understand why they changed Marcia name in Darcia; "marcia" literally means "rotten" in italian, not much cute XD At least the dubbing is better than in the english version.

True..and poor Pelleas, I'm not much of a fan of him, but the poor boy truly is unlucky ;_;

yeah, me too. there is an artist on Pixiv which I can't find at the moment who draws these amazing backgrounds, in full color, with tons of details and an amazing prospective...the sort of things you wonder how much time it took, and then you read below "done in 2-3 hours"...I sort of hope he/she lies.

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be surprised if PAL RD's language was determined by whatever the Wii was set to, yeah. But now I'm really curious about what the cutscenes sound like in different languages! The English version's dubbing wasn't exactly, um... stellar, for the most part? xD

I'm kind of confused as to why the names of the countries were changed, because I can't think of a reason either; maybe they're not "exotic-sounding" enough for European players? Actually, a lot of the name changes are just confusing, like Stella (Japanese) -> Astrid (English) or Ulysses -> Bastian. Huh? Was there anything wrong with the original names? (Marcia's name change in the Italian version does make sense, though. :D)

I keep finding artists who do amazing speedpaints! I'm sure they've had a lot of practice and all, but I can't help but to envy them. I don't think they're lying about the time it took because I've seen videos and such that show the entire painting process, but... yeah, they're kind of ridiculously skilled. It's hard to believe sometimes. ;o;

[kiu22.livejournal.com]

yeah, not exactly stellar XDD
If you are curious about italian, go around 3.55min and you can hear Ike talking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyodOUoOj4A :3 ...he has the same subber of Vegeta XD In the end, I'm not even sure if I like his voice or not, I just like it more than the english one. Ranulf has a good one, but I can't find any video on Youtube (and since I'm at work on lunch break, my co-workers are starting to wonder what I'm watching...aehm...yespeoplewithbluehairareperfectlynormalyescattailstoo)

Don't know, that could be an explanation. Many names were changed without a clear reason why but personately I don't mind, I like the english ones better (or maybe I'm just more used at them by now). The only one I can possibly understand is Stefan, his original name was unpronounceable XD it's a pity he lost the "Soan" part as a reference to his heritage though

ps. uh, LJ messed up with this comment, I apologize if you see it twice

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

Ooh. The Italian dub... I think I'm a little iffy on Ike's voice (also loling at Ike = Vegeta), but Micaiah sounds sort of okay, though it was a little hard to make out her voice. Italian!Yune is cute! ;_; Though I'm wondering if she doesn't sound a little too old for her looks, but still. Really cute. (Ah, Italian is a such a pretty-sounding language~. :o) I should probably just... stop being lazy and change the language on my Wii to compare the voice actors. xD
(Tsk, blue catboys are a perfectly normal thing!)

I think Soanevalcke has too many letters in it to fit within the limit, too, so that might've been a reason for the change. And yes, I'm glad they changed some of the names - such as Wayu or Yofa - as they did sound rather silly. I think I'm mostly just wondering why the normal-sounding ones were changed, even though I don't really mind. :o